War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [482]
Rostov, unwilling to thrust his acquaintance upon the princess, did not approach her, but stayed in the village awaiting her departure. Having waited until Princess Marya’s carriages left the house, Rostov mounted his horse and accompanied her, riding as far as the road occupied by our troops, eight miles from Bogucharovo. In Yankovo, at the inn, he respectfully took leave of her, for the first time allowing himself to kiss her hand.
“Shame on you,” he said, blushing, in reply to Princess Marya’s expression of gratitude for her salvation (as she called what he had done), “any policeman would have done the same. If we only had to make war on muzhiks, we wouldn’t have let the enemy get so far,” he said, embarrassed at something and trying to change the subject. “I am only happy to have had the chance to make your acquaintance. Good-bye, Princess, I wish you happiness and consolation and wish to meet you under happier circumstances. If you don’t want to make me blush, please, don’t thank me.”
But the princess, if she no longer thanked him with words, thanked him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude and tenderness. She could not believe that she had nothing to thank him for. On the contrary, for her it was unquestionable that, if he had not been there, she would certainly have perished, both from the rebels and from the French; that he, in order to save her, had subjected himself to the most obvious and terrible dangers; and it was still more unquestionable that he was a man of lofty and noble soul, who had been able to understand her position and her grief. His kind and honest eyes, with tears welling up in them, at that time when she herself, weeping, had spoken to him of her loss, would not leave her imagination.
When she said good-bye to him and was left alone, Princess Marya suddenly felt tears in her eyes, and here, not for the first time, a strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?
Further on the way to Moscow, despite the fact that the princess’s position was not joyful, Dunyasha, who was riding in the carriage with her, noticed more than once that the princess, leaning out the window of the carriage, was smiling joyfully and sadly at something.
“Well, what if I really have fallen in love with him?” thought Princess Marya.
Ashamed as she was to admit to herself that she had fallen in love first with a man who, perhaps, would never love her, she comforted herself with the thought that no one would ever know of it, and that she would not be to blame if, to the end of her life, without speaking of it to anyone, she should love the one she loved for the first and last time.
Sometimes she remembered his glances, his sympathy, his words, and happiness did not seem impossible to her. And it was then that Dunyasha noticed her, smiling, looking out the window of the carriage.
“And it had to be that he came to Bogucharovo, and at that very moment!” thought Princess Marya. “And his sister had to refuse Prince Andrei!” And in all of that Princess Marya saw the will of Providence.
The impression Princess Marya made on Rostov was very pleasant. Whenever he remembered her, he became cheerful, and when his comrades, having learned of his adventure in Bogucharovo, teased him with having gone for hay and picked up one of the wealthiest brides in Russia, Rostov became angry. He became angry precisely because, against his will, the thought of marrying the meek Princess Marya, whom he found pleasant and who had an enormous fortune, had occurred to him more than once. For himself personally, Nikolai could not have wished for a better wife than Princess Marya: his marriage to her would make for the happiness of the countess, his mother, and would straighten out the affairs of his father; and it would even—Nikolai felt this—make for the happiness of Princess Marya.
But Sonya? And the word he had given? That was what made Rostov angry when they teased him about Princess Bolkonsky.
XV
Having taken command of the armies, Kutuzov remembered